Ranjitkumar, R v

A compensation order is a restorative measure, not a punishment. It should not be made where its only practical means of satisfaction is the sale of a shared family home, leaving its occupants homeless. The same principle applies to a shared family home as to a matrimonial home.

Family relationships and the way in which relatives have treated an offender are irrelevant to the sentencing exercise. They cannot justify a financial order intended to compensate the victim.

The appellant pleaded guilty at Chelmsford Crown Court to conspiracy to defraud and false accounting. He received concurrent terms of imprisonment, a confiscation order and a compensation order of £73,853.81 in favour of HBOS Plc.

He appealed, with leave, only against the compensation order. The order could be satisfied only by selling a jointly owned family home in which his father, stepmother and other family members lived. The central issue was whether that order was a proper compensatory order in those circumstances.

1. Appeal allowed. The compensation order was set aside.
2. A compensation order provides a summary means of repairing damage caused by an offence and avoiding civil proceedings. It is not a punishment. The court accepted that it was wrong to make an order which could only be met by selling the family home and thereby leaving the family homeless.
3. The earlier authorities concerned matrimonial homes, but there was no difference in principle where the property was a shared family home. The property also appeared to have become a matrimonial home.
4. The sentencing judge's views about the appellant's relationship with his relatives, and their treatment of him, were wholly irrelevant to the sentencing exercise. Those matters could not support the making of the financial order.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division): Allowed the appeal against sentence and set aside the compensation order.
• Crown Court at Chelmsford: Following guilty pleas to conspiracy to defraud and false accounting, imposed concurrent terms of imprisonment and a compensation order of £73,853.81.